In war-ravaged Aleppo, immense challenges ahead
Beirut — Hundreds of people returned to eastern Aleppo neighborhoods on Friday to check on their homes after the last opposition fighters left the city, picking through debris and wreckage for personal belongings blasted by years of fighting.
In a sign of the immense challenges that still lie ahead for Syrian President Bashar Assad, rebels outside the city shelled a neighborhood in the city, killing three people in the first bombardment since government forces took full control of Syria’s largest city a day earlier, state TV reported.
The rebel surrender in Aleppo ended a brutal chapter in Syria’s nearly six-year civil war, and marked Assad’s most significant victory since an uprising against his family’s four-decade rule began in 2011. But large parts of the war-ravaged country remain outside his control, including rural areas in Aleppo province south and west of the city where opposition fighters still operate.
Assad has said that the most important priority after securing Aleppo will be fortifying the countryside around it before moving on to other strongholds outside his control, including the nearby province of Idlib, west of Aleppo, and the city of Raqqa controlled by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria.
Syrian TV said the rockets that hit the southwestern neighborhood of Hamadaniyeh were fired by insurgents based southwest of Aleppo.
Associated Press footage from inside neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo taken over by the army after the last rebels were bused out a day earlier captured the staggering destruction: Row after row of destroyed buildings, many with blown out doors and windows, and toppled floors, along debris-strewn streets lined with charred vehicles. Not a single building appeared intact.
In the Sukkari, Ansari and Amiriyeh neighborhoods, army experts were dismantling explosives and boobytraps left behind by rebels.
Hundreds of people walked through the Bustan al-Qasr crossing, a passageway that separated rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo from the government-controlled al-Masharqa district, which was closed years ago, cutting off links between the two sides of the divided city.
Ahmad Khayata was among those who returned to see what remains of his home in Sukkari, one of the last neighborhoods to be evacuated by opposition fighters Thursday. He was told by soldiers he needed to wait until they finish de-mining the area.
“It’s been five years since I left my home,” he said. “Thank God now we are back.”